Annual conference: „Contested Concepts of Property in Past & Present“

Contested Concepts of Property in Past & Present

Annual Conference of the Collaborative Research Centre Structural Change of Property

Date: October 4/5, 2022

Venue: Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Main Building (UHG)

Social conflicts over property arise against the background of historically contested concepts of property. In social and political conflicts about who owns whom or what, there is always a social struggle about what counts as property and what does not. Concepts of property are contested in at least three ways. First, property rights take on historically specific forms of the private, the social, and the public. Second, these rights are shaped by different goods; property is held in infrastructures, energy, labor, knowledge, land, data, and nature. Third, property rights are embedded in a social context of appropriation, propriation, and expropriation. Goods are taken into possession, placed under a property regime, or transferred to new owners both with and without the consent of the old ones.

At the international and interdisciplinary conference of the SFB Structural Transformation of Property collaborative research centre, these contested concepts of property will be discussed using case studies that are socially and politically relevant for the present. These case studies include questions about the history of colonial appropriation as well as the restitution of colonial plundered art. In addition, the conventional practice of appropriating natural goods will be questioned in terms of climate policy. A history of expropriation shows that social developments have always been enabled by policies of dispossession. Inheritance societies, with their growing inequalities, raise questions about the temporal limits of property. Digital and financialized capitalism create new kinds of property structures that need to be understood and criticized, and the debate over housing and urban space makes the testing of alternative forms of property urgent. The conference will conclude with a public panel discussion on the socialization of property.

Property in Dialogue

The conference will be accompanied by a small art exhibition "Property in Dialogue", showing some of Lisa Endriß' art and inviting people to engage in so-called table talks, interested parties can discuss central questions and problems associated with different property relations in small, guided discussion groups. This event is curated by Andrea Esser and Yann Schosser. Please see here for more information.

Download the conference programm

Tuesday, October 4

12:00                  Welcome by the SFB-Speaker Hartmut Rosa and
      (Aula)            Kim Siebenhüner, Vice-President of the Friedrich-Schiller-University
                            Introduction by Tilo Wesche

12:30 – 14:00

    Keynote 1      Property, Modernity, Planetarity
       (Aula)          Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago) (online)
                           Comment by Hartmut Rosa
                           Chair: Helen Gibson

 

14:00 – 14:30       Break

14:30 – 16:00

    Panel 1            History of Expropriation
    (HS 24)            Nicholas Mulder (Cornell University)
                             Eckart Conze (Marburg University)
                             Comment by Florian Peters
                             Chair: Anna Möllers

 

   Panel 2             Expropriation and Civil Disobedience
    (Aula)               Andreas Malm (Lund University) (online)
                             Robin Celikates (Free University of Berlin)
                             Comment by Petra Gümplová
                             Chair: Steffen Liebig

 

16:00 – 16:30       Break

16:30 – 18:00

    Panel 3            Colonial Appropriation
     (Aula)              Brenna Bhandar (University of British Columbia) (online)
                             Allan Greer (McGill University)
                             Comment by Sophie Jossi-Silverstein
                             Chair:  Jacob Blumenfeld

    Panel 4            Appropriation and Restitution
    (HS 24)            Matthias Goldmann (EBS University)
                             Flower Manase (National Museum of Tanzania)
                             Comment by Jürgen Martschukat
                             Chair: Dirk Schuck

18:00 – 18:30       Break

18:30 – 20:00

    Keynote 2        On Race and Reinscription: Writing Enslaved Women into the Early Modern Archive
      (Aula)             Jennifer Morgan (New York University) (online) 
                             Comment by Helen Gibson 
                             Chair: Moana J. Packo

 

Wednesday, October 5

09:30 – 11:00

    Keynote 3        A Right to Party? Towards a Critical Sociology of Structural Privilege
       (Aula)            Stephan Lessenich (Goethe University Frankfurt)
                             Comment by Tilman Reitz
                             Chair: Verena Wolf

11:00 – 11:30        Break

11:30 – 13:00 

    Panel 5            Inheritance
    (HS 24)            Stefan Gosepath (Free University of Berlin)
                             Thomas Gutmann (University of Münster)
                             Comment by Lydia von der Weth
                             Chair: Karlotta Böthig

    Panel 6            Digital and Financial Capitalism
     (Aula)              Philipp Staab (Humboldt University of Berlin)
                             Aaron Sahr (Hamburg Institute for Social Research)
                             Comment by Marlen van den Ecker and Tobias Stadler
                             Chair: Sebastian Sevignani

13:00 – 14:00       Lunch

14:00 – 15:30   

    Dialogue          Critique of Property
      (Aula)             Christoph Menke (Goethe University Frankfurt)
                             Katharina Pistor (Columbia University) (online)
                             Chair: Niklas Angebauer

15:30 – 16:00       Break

16:00 – 17:30

    Panel 7            Who Owns the City?
     (Aula)              Rahel Jaeggi (Humboldt University of Berlin)
                             Regina Kreide (Gießen University)
                             Marie-Pierre Lefeuvre (University of Tours) (online)
                             Comments by Markus Kip and Daniel Kunze
                             Chair: Lukas Lachenicht

 

17:30 – 18:00       Break

18:00 – 20:00      Wohnen, Wasser und Energie als öffentliche Infrastrukturen  -  Kommunalisieren, Vergesellschaften, Enteignen?
                             mit:
                             Reinhard Guthke (Verein Bürgerenergie Thüringen)
                             Sebastian Kohl (Freie Universität Berlin)
                             Joanna Kusiak (DW&Co Enteignen/King’s College, Cambridge)
                             Cara Röhner (Hochschule RheinMain)
                             Florian Schmidt (Bezirksstadtrat in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg/ Berlin)
                             Barbara Schönig (Staatssekretärin im Thüringer Ministerium für Infrastruktur und Landwirtschaft,
                                                            Professorin für Stadtplanung, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar)
                             Raul Zelik (Sozialwissenschaftler und Schriftsteller, Berlin)

                             Moderation: Silke van Dyk, Ute Tellmann

                             Venue: Paradiescafé
                             Debate flyer: here

Registration

If you want to register for the event, please send an email to the following address until September 19: